UK will give 160 Million pounds as educational aid to the Punjab Government

Lahore: Department of International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom has agreed to provide a sum of 160 Million pounds as educational aid to the Punjab Government to promote education in the impecunious strata during the next five years. Under the plan, 90 million pounds will be given to the school education department while another sum of 70 billion has been earmarked for the Punjab Education Foundation to arrange education of out of school children in the province through public private partnership model. The PEF has envisaged using this amount for the gratis education of four million deserving children in the province by 2017.

This was stated by Chairman Punjab Education Foundation Raja Muhammad Anwar while addressing the District Coordination Meeting of PEF Partner School of the district at Raza Hall on Thursday. Addressing the function, Raja Anwar maintained that the selection of PEF for the promotion of education of out of school children is a clear manifestation of international trust and confidence. PEF model of public private partnership has won international recognition and acclaim because of its effectiveness and good results, he further maintained. He told that the foundation has taken a number of steps to improve the educational standards of the low cost partner schools so that the students could get quality education without any burden of expenditures.

Raja Anwar observed that the nations giving priority to education sector rise among the comity of nations and their youth also emerges as the confident leaders of tomorrow. He reiterated the commitment of the foundation to arrange education of every deserving child in the province and vowed that the foundation shall forever eradicate the menace of ignorance by enrolling the last out of school child in the PEF partner school and with this, the province shall be free of ignorance once and for all. The function was also addressed by partner school heads who presented proposals to further expand this model at the grassroots.